Insanity of War in Slaughterhouse Five

Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., is the tale of a gawky World War II veteran/soldier, Billy Pilgrim. His wartime experiences and their effects lead him to the ultimate conclusion that war is unexplainable. To portray this effectively, Vonnegut presents the story in two dimensions: historical and science-fiction. The irrationality of war is emphasized in each dimension by contrasts in its comic and tragic elements. The historical seriousness of the Battle of the Bulge and the bombing of Dresden are contrasted by many ironies and dark humor; the fantastical, science-fiction-type place of Tralfamadore is, in truth, an outlet for Vonnegut to show his incredibly serious fatalistic views. The surprising variations of the seriousness and light-heartedness allow Vonnegut to show effectively that war is absurd. The most important historical plot strand of Slaughterhouse-Five is Billy Pilgrim's war experience which occurs during the last six months of World War II. This plot strand follows Billy through the Battle of the Bulge and his presence as a POW during the bombing of Dresden, Germany. Vonnegut contrasts these documented milestones with incredible amounts of dramatic irony and dark humor. This provides the plot with not only comic relief, but examples of absurdities which parallel the message of the insanity of war. Billy, standing at a lanky six-foot two, is introduced in the middle of a Luxembourg forest during the Battle of the Bulge. He, along with two infantry scouts and an antitank gunner named Roland Weary, have been separated from their platoon and are alone in enemy territory. In contrast to the two scouts, who are quiet and swiftly moving through the forest, Weary and Billy are loud and clumsy. The scouts abandon Billy and Weary, as they are a threat to their survival. Ironically the talented, trained scouts are killed by the Germans, whereas Billy and Roland are spared and merely taken as POWs. The simplicity and innocence in the description of...

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Vonnegut uses setting to convey the terrors of war by juxtaposing the hell-like Dresden with the heavenly Trafalmador. After the firebombing of Dresden, when the soldiers emerge out of a slaughterhouse, they find the entire city desolate and destroyed. As the soldiers wander out of the slaughterhouse, Vonnegut writes, "One thing was clear: Absolutely everybody in the city was supposed to be dead, regardless of what they were, and that anybody that moved represented a flaw in the design. There were to be no moon men at all. 135,000 civilians are killed in the raid, almost twice the number...

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Vonnegut uses the characters in Slaughterhouse-Five to show the destructiveness of war and the psychological affects it has on people. This is mostly seen in the novel’s main character Billy Pilgrim. Billy is a good...

...mention of war and the key motif of “so it goes” contribute to the novel?
Throughout the novel Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut we focus on three motifs/themes to define whether or not it is an anti-war novel. Through the anti-war illusion of free will theme and the “so it goes” motif we are able to make clear assumptions. The illusion of free will, “so it goes” and the presence of the narrator and gruesome images of war throughout the play defy Vonnegut’s idea that “writing an anti-war novel is the same as writing an anti-glacier novel” clearly stating that he is not writing against war. We further question the authorial intentions due to the fact the Vonnegut portrays both science fiction and anti-war features through, Tralfamadorians, the destructiveness of war, free will being incarcerated and the way in which the phrase “so it goes” is used. This science fiction, anti-war novel narrated in both first and third person provides a very ironic and satire tone about war and Billy’s adventures, such as being transported across Germany, down Dresden in a slaughterhouse and finally abducted by aliens . All while Billy tries to make sense of his life.
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Twists & Tralfalmadorians: Symbolism in SlaughterhouseFive
Not everyone is a time-traveling, dimension-defying war veteran. However, Billy Pilgrim, the main character in the novel SlaughterhouseFive by Kurt Vonnegut, is one such human. Blessed with a special gift of being able to walk through time and space unexpectedly by an alien race called Tralfalmadorians (from a planet by the name of Tralfalmador), Billy Pilgrim encounters a variety of humorous, ironic, ridiculous, and sometimes dark situations. Vonnegut, being a veteran of the second World War himself, also had encountered his fair share of unfortunate and dark situations. From this, Vonnegut uses both men to portray the negative effects of war on the human psyche (such as P.T.S.D.), and how they can create lasting mental and emotional scars on soldiers and those involved with wars.
Veterans of foreign wars often suffer from many lasting negative effects on their personality and physical abilities. An extremely common example of this is insomnia, quite possibly due to an inability to suppress memories of events during the war. Vonnegut, having been a veteran of World War II and the extremely gruesome Dresden bombing, is a victim of such a plight. Often times, late at night, when suffering...

...them and that they should not try hard enough in what they choose to accomplish. In Slaughterhouse-five written by Kurt Vonnegut in 1969 focuses on the life of a man born in New York. This man goes by the name of Billy Pilgrim and at the age of 19 is drafted into World War II, after his years of being a prisoner of war he is captured by aliens, the Tralfamadorians and begins to travel within his lifespan. The antagonist in Mark Twain’s “The Mysterious Stranger” states that the human race is “…always claiming virtues which it hasn’t got’”; the content of Slaughter-house-five supports this claim by evidence of humans expecting everything being handed to them, how the captured soldiers were treated, and the human fat being used as soap.
Humans are so used to having everything handed over to them; they expect everything to be done, so they lack the ability to fully understand what hard work is. Not only is it their fault, but also the fault of those who raised them, those who “babied” them. During the time of Weary being in the war he liked to show off the things he had, the things his parents handed to him, and the things that made him feel superior to others. His outerwear was described as, “He had very piece of equipment he had ever been issued, every present he’d received from home: helmet, helmet liner…”(Vonnegut 50). Weary was so used to receiving from his parents. Unlike everyone else...

...The Horror of War Exposed in SlaughterhouseFive
When one begins to analyze a military novel it is important to
first look at the historical context in which the book was written. On the
nights of February 13-14 in 1944 the city of Dresden, Germany was subjected
to one of the worst air attacks in the history of man. By the end of the
bombing 135,000 to 250,000 people had been killed by the combined forces of
the United States and the United Kingdom. Dresden was different then Berlin
or many of the other military targets which were attacked during World War
II because it was never fortified or used for strategic purposes and,
therefore, was not considered a military target. Because of it's apparent
safety, thousands of refugees from all over Europe converged on Dresden
for protection (Klinkowitz 2-3). Dresden's neutrality was broken and the
resulting attacks laid waste, what Vonnegut called, "the Florence of the
Elbe." Kurt Vonnegut was a witness to this event and because of fate, had
been spared. He wrote SlaughterhouseFive to answer the questi on that
resounded through his head long after the bombs could no longer be heard.
"Why me?"- a frequent question asked by survivors of war.
Vonnegut was tormented by this question and through Billy Pilgrim,
the protagonist in...

...Slaughterhouse-Five explores fate, free will, and the illogical nature of human beings. Protagonist Billy Pilgrim is unstuck in time, randomly experiencing the events of his life, with no idea of what part he will next visit.
Billy Pilgrim says there is no free will, an assertion confirmed by a Tralfamadorian, who says, "I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will." The story's central concept is that most of humanity is insignificant--they do what they do, because they must.
To the Tralfamadorians, everything simultaneously exists, therefore, everyone is always alive. They, too, have wars and suffer tragedies (they destroy the universe whilst testing spaceship fuels), but, when Billy asks what they do about wars, they reply that they simply ignore them. The Tralfamadorians counter Vonnegut's true theme: life, as a human being, is only enjoyable with unknowns. Tralfamadorians do not make choices about what they do, but have power only over what they think (the subject of Timequake). Vonnegut expounds his position in chapter one, "that writing an anti-war book is like writing an anti-glacier book," both being futile endeavours, since both phenomena are unstoppable.
Like much of Vonnegut's other works (e.g., The Sirens of Titan), Slaughterhouse-Five explores the concept of fatalism. The Tralfamadorians represent the...

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